AFTEREFFECTS: THE POLITICS

By PATRICK E. TYLER

Published: May 9, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 8—
Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leader who is expected to take a senior post in Iraq's interim government, said today that the heads of Arab countries should be called to account for Saddam Hussein's crimes against the Iraqi people.

Mr. Talabani spoke in an interview on a day of political meetings between ranking American military and civilian reconstruction officials. He said that the discovery of mass graves in several locations around the country underscores the responsibility that Arab leaders must take for their support for Mr. Hussein and the Baath Party, which built and enforced his totalitarian rule.

''The Arab governments must come and see those mass graves and decide what kinds of crimes were committed by Saddam Hussein,'' Mr. Talabani said. ''And then they must go to the Iraqi people and apologize.''

The Kurdish leader is the second senior opposition figure this week to speak of the deep rift between a postwar Iraq and the Arab world. Earlier this week, Ahmad Chalabi, another opposition leader, said it would be up to Arab leaders to ''mend their ways'' with Iraq rather than the other way around.

Taken together, the remarks by the two Iraqi political figures appeared to be timed to head off mounting criticism in the Arab world suggesting that the United States is attempting to install a group of American-financed exiles and Kurds as the new government.

A new Iraqi government appears likely to challenge many long-held Arab positions on democracy, human rights and relations with Israel.

The Iraqi landscape is yielding up mass graves related to the 1991 uprising against Mr. Hussein, the suppression of Kurdish opposition in northern Iraq, and more than two decades of secret arrests and executions by Mr. Hussein's security forces.

The Kurdish leader said he had sent his aide, Barham Saleh, on a tour of Arab capitals this week. He pointed with pride to a Kurdish newspaper report that Mr. Saleh said in Cairo that the secretary general of the 22-nation Arab League, Amr Moussa, should explain to Iraqis why he supported Mr. Hussein and why he opposed the American-led military campaign to topple him.

Mr. Talabani also criticized King Abdullah II of Jordan for his ''strange'' personal attacks on members of the Iraqi opposition, principally Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, who is also a potential leader of the interim government.

Mr. Chalabi, Mr. Talabani and the other leaders of opposition groups now represented in Baghdad, met today in an attempt to set a date to organize a national assembly of more than 350 representatives and select a new government. In the interview, Mr. Talabani said that he supported Mr. Chalabi's assertion that Iraq's interim government cannot be led by a committee of leaders, but must form a government of ministers under a single prime minister.

He said there had been no discussion of who would take the post, but he said he doubted that Mr. Chalabi would take it at the start, due to his poisonous relations with so many governments in the region.

''How can we deal with the Arabs when the prime minister is hated by the Arabs?'' he asked.

Mr. Talabani also said that Kurdish officials had begun to assert their claims to a central role in a new Iraqi government.

''We have asked for one of the important posts of president or prime minister,'' he said. ''One must be in the hands of a capable Kurd.''

The Kurds, long persecuted by Mr. Hussein, have established a self-governing region in the north of Iraq under American protection. They now face the challenge of establishing their political power at the national level.

Mr. Chalabi is planning to broaden both his domestic political base in Iraq and his profile abroad. The Iraqi National Congress, the movement that used to encompass Mr. Chalabi's supporters, the Kurdish parties and a number of other political groups, has splintered, and its parts have migrated back to their individual groups.

As a result, Mr. Chalabi and his aides are planning to revamp their movement by calling a convention in Baghdad, expanding its membership to 1,000 or more representatives, and declaring the group a political party. At the same time, Mr. Chalabi has been invited to make a high-profile visit to Turkey, where he could project a statesman's profile in the capital of a non-Arab neighbor.

By the end of their meeting today, the opposition leaders still had not completed preparations to call a national assembly meeting to select and form an interim government by the end of the month.

The leaders expanded their five-member council by two seats to include a longtime Baghdad lawyer, Nasir al-Chadirchy, whose father, Kamel, was a leading democratic political thinker in Iraq during the 1950's and founder of the National Democratic Party of Iraq. They also created a seat for a representative of the Dawa Party, a Shiite group.

The inclusion of Mr. Chadirchy added an Arab Sunni Muslim official to the council. To balance his appointment, another Shiite seat had to be created to maintain a Shiite majority on the council, roughly reflection the 60-40 balance of Shiites to Sunnis in the population.

After their political talks, the council met with Jay Garner, the retired American lieutenant general charged with reconstructing Iraq, and aides to Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the allied land forces commander in Iraq.

In a closed session, Mr. Talabani said he had criticized the United States military for its failure to provide basic security on the country's highways. He complained that an Iranian opposition group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, was still maintaining checkpoints on some roads north of Baghdad.